Pepperdine recently hosted the nation’s largest ethnic-specific student conference which drew students from 31 other schools to the Malibu campus. The 24th annual Korean American Student Conference more commonly known as KASCON took place March 5 and 6.
The two-day event kicked off Friday with networking activities. Students explored career options meeting with leading Korean professionals in their respective fields.The day was also packed with entertainment— a coffee shop-style venue featuring musicians performers and stand-up comedians— in addition to dinner and an opening ceremony.
The ceremony featured famed Korean American journalist K.W. Lee whose speech students considered among the event’s highlights. Though often controversial the delivery was impactful and inspirational Associate Director Jeannie Park said.
“He just really realizes that our generation can do something about the future and that their future is our generation Park said. That was definitely very inspirational.”
The conference continued Saturday with a series of seminars and career workshops. The seminars brought in a variety of engaging speakers who addressed issues pertinent to the Korean-American community including Korean-American representation in the U.S. census the situation in North Korea and human trafficking.
“A lot of our attendees didn’t know what was going on Park said. They were really informed in comparison to before they came to the conference.”
Hansol Choi a freshman in the pre-med program agreed that the informative speakers impacted her in a positive way.
“It was a good experience because I didn’t know much about the Korean-American community she said. Listening to the speakers inspired me to not be so focused on my own small community but look at the world in a bigger perspective.”
Hansol was especially inspired by speaker Justin Wheeler of Link an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the humanitarian crisis in North Korea. “Listening to him speak really made me want to not just listen but do something about it Hansol said of the humanitarian issues brought to light by Wheeler’s seminar.
Though the turnout for the conference was significantly smaller than most years— approximately 150 students— Daniel Kim, executive director of KASCON, was not disappointed.
It was the smoothest-running conference to date Kim said. Because it was smaller we were able to up the quality. Initially we were worried but it all worked itself out.”
“The KASCON conferences are usually very huge in scale at other schools because they are mostly held in big schools Sungwoo Choi, one of KASCON’s entertainment managers, said. Sungwoo agreed that the small size of the event contributed greatly to its overall quality.
Because we kept it at a small scale we were able to concentrate a lot on the speakers and the speeches that were given he said. We were able to keep it at a very educational level— very informative. It was a really good balance of having fun and educating ourselves.”
The ultimate mission of KASCON according to the official Web site is “to inspire and empower its participants so that they leave with the motivation to advance the Korean American community.”
Volunteer Mina Kim said the event certainly achieved its goal and agreed the experience helped tighten bonds within the Korean-American community. In the meantime it also served to enrich the Pepperdine community as a whole Sungwoo said.
“I think the school is slowly getting bigger and bigger and I think it’s important we have diversity he said. This helped the school open up to different things and I think it was a good experience for the Korean Americans at Pepperdine.”
“It was just really successful Park said. A lot of the people personally came up to each of us saying ‘that actually changed my life’ or ‘now I’m motivated’.”